Romans
3:1-20
What About the Jews?
Page 3
Now Jesus
says 'you've rejected me, the cornerstone" verse 43 [of Matthew
21], "therefore I'm going to reject you.'
"Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God shall be
taken away from you, and given to a nation bringing forth
the fruits thereof. And
whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on
whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder."
He's saying, 'This stone that you've rejected, I tell
you, this stone is going to judge you, you're going to fall
on it, and you're going to be broken.' Talking to the leadership of that day, he's
telling them, 'Look, there's no hope of your salvation, because
you've rejected me.' [verses 45-46 show who this was aimed
at, the chief priests and Pharisees, the leadership of that
day in Israel.] Then
he said, 'The day will come when I'll judge everyone. And the stone will fall and grind to powder
those that it falls on," shades
of Daniel 2 [vs 44] and the great rock, cut without hand coming
down and destroying the kingdoms of this earth, grinding them
to powder. But Jesus says, 'Because you have rejected me,
I reject you to be my vehicle anymore, of giving my truth
to the world.' And at that moment, this verse doesn't mean
God has rejected the nation, but the gospel of the kingdom
has been taken away from them, and they're no longer the vehicle
or vessel of God's truth today, the church is, the Bride of
Christ is. [But miracle
of miracle, God is calling back into the church a growing
number of ethnic Jews, re-grafting them back onto the Olive
Tree from whence they've been severed, cf. Romans 11.]
We are the nation that he says, in verse 43, is producing
the fruit of the kingdom of God [1 Peter 2:9].
We are the nation that has repented.
'The nation? What do you mean?' Well, that's what it says in 1 Peter 2:9, 'We
are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people
for God's own possession.'
We are the nation that the kingdom has been given to.
So does that mean God has forsaken Israel? Not in your life, he's just said 'You can't
be my vehicle anymore.' The
treasury was in Israel. It's
like, you got this fancy dump-truck that's got the load in
it, OK. This is what
the world needs, but it breaks down and you can't get it to
budge, and it breaks down on purpose.
And so, what do you do?
You look for another truck.
Is there a truck available?
And here's the truck, the church, the Gentiles.
Well, put it in there.
Put the treasure in there. [Now this analogy isn't perfectly true. The early church in Asia Minor and the Middle
East had a very high percentage of Messianic congregations,
made up of Jewish believers in Yeshua, up until around 325AD.
Check out this link: http://www.UNITYINCHRIST.COM/history2/Rejection%20of%20Judeo-Christianity.htm
. You also might want
to read the article titled "The Plight of Judeo-Christianity"
found in the same section as the one above.
Jewish Christians, the Messianic congregations in the
Middle East and Asia Minor were an integral and initially
the main part of the "church" vehicle, dump-truck, "holy nation,
royal priesthood" Peter talked of.
We must come to understand that the Jewish branch of
the Christian church, the body of Christ, got eliminated,
first by Greco-Roman decrees starting in 325AD, and then by
the civil authority of the Roman government, under the control
of the chief Greco-Roman church headquartered in Rome. Now the Messianic Jewish Christian believers
are coming back into the body of Christ, called into belief
in Jesus of Nazareth by God himself.
And what Zechariah 12 has shown us, that at the 2nd
coming of the Messiah, the whole Jewish nation of Israel repents,
and becomes part of the church, and then the gospel, the Word
of the Lord, goes out to the whole world and covers the world
as the oceans cover the world.]
It's still your [God's] chosen truck.
It's still your vehicle.
It's still got potential, but you've got to get the
word out, you're not going to wait for them [the whole Jewish
nation] to come to their senses, let's get the word out, let's
save the world. And
so God took the responsibility of spreading the gospel from
the Jews, and he gave it to the church [and remember, as I
pointed out, the church was made up of two branches, Jewish
and Gentile up until around 325AD, with many Messianic Quartodeciman
congregations in Asia Minor].
There are many in the church today that teach that
God is through with the nation of Israel because they rejected
Christ. They teach the church is now Israel. But actually this teaching is based upon a belief
in God's unfaithfulness. Because if you believe that God has rejected
Israel, then what makes you think that God won't reject you
someday? If you say that God has rejected Israel, you
are showing ignorance of the Scriptures.
Because if you knew what God has promised Israel, you
would never say God has rejected them, because you would be
calling God a liar!--promise breaker!
You'd better not do that. You say, 'Well, what did he promise them?'
Well, look at Genesis 15. God chose a pagan guy by the name of Abram,
called him out of his hometown of Er [of the Chaldees]. Had him move out into the middle of nowhere.
And God gave him a promise, he says, "Abram out of
you I'm going to make a mighty nation, the Messiah's going
to come through you, I'm going to bless you so that your descendants
are for number like the sand of the seashore, the stars of
the sky.' And it says, "And Abraham believed the Lord.it
was reckoned to him as righteousness."
But then God said, 'We need to make this official,
we need to write this down.'
And so in those days they couldn't run to the hallmark
store and pick up the legal forms they needed.
They had a very simple way of making a legal agreement.
God said 'This is what I'm going to do for you.'
What they would do is, the two parties involved in
a covenant or an agreement would decide what they were going
to do, they would write it down. And then they would take an animal or animals,
they would cut them in two, push the animal apart, make a
path through that animal(s) that had been cut in two, and
they would walk through it, back-to-back.
They would recite their promise as they walked through
it. In other words,
they were saying, "If I don't keep up my end of the agreement,
or, if he doesn't keep his end of the agreement up, you can
cut whoever fails in two [like this or these animals we're
walking through]. 'We'll people didn't break their promises in
those days.' [You ever
wonder why?] So God made this promise to Abram, and Abram's,
'Lord, OK, what's my part, what's my part?' And the Lord says, 'Get the form ready.' And it says in verse 9, "Bring me a three year
old heifer, and a three year old female goat, and a three
year old ram, a turtle dove and a young pigeon.
And he brought all these to him, and he cut them in
two, and laid each half opposite the other.
But he didn't cut the birds (they're too hard to cut)
and the birds of prey came down upon the carcasses and Abram
drove them away. Now
when the sun was going down a deep sleep fell upon Abram." (The kind of sleep that comes upon some of you
guys on Sunday mornings, you know.
I just hope I live long enough someday to fall asleep
during one of my sermons. [laughter]
Wouldn't that be funny? I heard about a preacher who
did that. He was so
old, he started preaching, and sort of got heavier, heavier,
eyes would--finally he fell asleep.
What would you do?
Sing a song, probably.)
Ah, anyway, this sleep came upon Abram.
Why? God put him out of commission. Why?! Because
God didn't want Abraham walking through that covenant, because
he knew that Abraham and his descendants wouldn't be able
to keep up their end of the agreement.
And so, you know what?
God put him asleep, and God passed through that himself,
taking upon himself the higher responsibility. God's saying, 'If I don't keep my promise, you
can cut me in two.' My
promise is not dependant on Abraham's performance, or any
of his descendants' performance, not upon their good works,
not upon their faithfulness, nothing, it's all my responsibility
to do what I've promised to do, period.' Wow. You
say, 'So what, Mark?' Don't
you understand? That
every promise in the New Testament is given to us based upon
God's promises to Israel? And that if God breaks his promise to Israel,
he might as well, he'll probably break his promises to us. But if he's always been faithful to his covenant
with Israel, based on his doing, then we can be pretty well
sure that he's not going to break one promise he's made to
us. He said, "I'll never leave you or forsake you."
You can bank on it! Why? Because
God's been faithful to Israel.
Well, has he been faithful to Israel?
You better believe he has.
You see, individual Jews, they're not secure unless
they believe in Messiah. But the nation itself is secure. [And as we've just read in Zechariah 12 God
himself brings the nation of Israel to repentance, as a whole
nation, at Jesus Christ's 2nd coming (Read Zechariah
12 in context with chapters 12, 13 and 14).]
[To read a parallel description of this Genesis covenant
agreement, log onto: http://www.unityinchrist.com/romans/romans9-11_4.htm .]
Jeremiah 31, look at Jeremiah 31. And get ready for something that will just knock
you off the saddle. Jeremiah
31, verse 35, this is good stuff, so get ready.
"Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by
day, and the fixed order of the moon and stars for light by
night, and who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar, the
Lord of hosts is his name:" Verse 36 says, "If this fixed order departs,"
'Well,
what fixed order?' He
just told you in verse 35, the sun lighting the day, the stars
at night, and then the moon making the ocean waves [tides],
if the sun stops, the stars stop, the moon stops, "then,
if this fixed order departs from before me, declares the Lord,
then, the offspring of Israel also shall cease from being
a nation before me"-how long?-"forever."
I went to the circus Friday night. And at the circus I have never been in such
a dead crowd in my entire life.
I mean, when you think about a circus, I mean, we saw
things that I didn't know people could do.
I saw these ladies bending their bodies in knots.
I think one of them went into one of those boy scout
knots. And here's the
whole crowd, just.dumb,d-dumb.And I'm going 'Come on gang,
this is something to get excited about, come on!' And everybody would look at me with that look
that says, 'What is the matter with you?'
So don't sit there, dead in your seats.
This isn't a circus though.
"Thus says the Lord", verse 37, "if the heaven above
can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched
out below." Can you
measure the heaven's, gang?
[The Hubble space telescope can't even do this] No, you can't. And if the deepest, deepest secrets of the ocean
can be revealed, and they can't.
[And our deepest diving subs haven't done this thoroughly
yet, and the only sub built to get down into the deepest trench
was retired years ago. And this never had all the instrumentation needed
to search out every secret of the deep.]
He says, ".then, I will also cast off the offspring
of Israel." 'Oh but Mark, they rejected Christ. They've done terrible things.' Do you think God didn't know that? God knows they would do terrible things. But his promise to them is not based upon their
performance, it's based on his performance. And that's why he says in verse 37, "Thus saith
the Lord; 'If heavens above can be measured, and foundations
of the earth searched out below, then I will cast off all
the offspring of Israel for all that they have done', declares
the Lord." In other
words, God says basically, "I don't care what they've done,
I'm never casting away that nation.
It's mine, forever."
'You say, well, that's only one verse Mark.'
OK, let's look at Numbers 23.
Go to the left, Numbers.
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, chapter 23, verse
19. This is when that
false prophet Balaam was prophecying, and he was supposed
to be cursing Israel--God took over his mouth.
And he couldn't get a curse out.
Instead, this awesome revelation of God's care for
Israel comes out. 23:19,
got it? No? I
love the sound of pages rustling.
It means you've got your Bibles, that's neat.
23:19, "God is not a man that he should"--what?--"lie,
nor a son of man that he should repent.
Has he said and will he not do it?
Or has he spoken, will he not make it good?
Behold, I have received a command to bless.
When he has blessed them I cannot revoke it."
Has God blessed Israel?
Yes. It can't be revoked. That's neat, gang, because God's blessed you,
and his blessing can't be revoked.
We'll look at that more in a minute.
"He has not observed iniquity in Jacob, nor has he
seen trouble in Israel, the Lord his God is with him."
This is so neat, because there had been iniquity in
Israel. There had been
sin in the camp. And
yet he's saying, 'Look, I'm not going to curse my people,
I'm overlooking their sin.'
Hallelujah! Because when God looks at me, does he see my
sin? No.
He sees me in Christ.
You see, the church isn't Israel.
But all our blessings are dependant upon God being
faithful to Israel, because what he did for them he may do
for the church. Now
you can't claim these promises just out of context, Haigen
and Copeland and some of these guys do.
Many of these promises are specifically for Israel.
And so don't take them out of context.
Make sure you've got them in context.
Let's go to Isaiah 54. This is a very important verse for those of
you who woke up to the earthquake this morning.
Isaiah 54:9-10, remember this one when the ground is
shakin'. "For this is like the days of Noah to me, when
I swore that the waters of Noah should not flood the earth
again. So, I have sworn that I will not be angry with
you, nor will I rebuke you, for the mountains may be removed,
and the hills may shake, but my lovingkindness will not be
removed from you. And my covenant of peace will not be shaken,
says the Lord who has compassion on you."
He's talking to Israel, and he's telling them "I don't
care, the mountains may fall, the hills may shake, but I am
not going to remove my lovingkindness and my compassion and
my covenant with you, you will never be shaken."
[And the Israeli's take verse 17 to heart even now
"No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper."
Awesome. Look at Isaiah 65, verse 15. "And you will leave your name for a curse to
my chosen ones, and the Lord God shall slay you, and
my servants will be called by another name, because he who
has blessed in the earth shall be blessed by the God of truth.
And he who swears in the earth, shall swear by the
God of truth, because the former troubles are forgotten, and
because they are hidden from my sight." In other words, they were saying, 'Look, Oh
curse those Jews! They've
rejected Messiah, curse them!'
He says, 'Look, you don't curse my people!
If you curse them, I curse you!
Sure they've done a lot of things, but' he says, 'I've
forgotten their former troubles. They're hidden from my sight.' God is forgiving the sin of Israel, and hallelujah
that's why he's the God who can forgive your sins too. [If you want to put these verses in context
to see if they are really talking about Israel, got back to
verse 1 and read through to verse 9-10.
He is talking about Israel, Jacob, and Judah who've
rejected God and sinned against him in every way.
In verse 9 God states through Isaiah "And I will bring
forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah an inheritor of
my mountains: and mine elect (elect, mine elect in the OT
Scriptures often refers to the church, those God calls to
a knowledge of salvation, especially in prophecies that go
way into the future, pertaining to the time period of the
2nd coming.) shall inherit it, and my servants
shall dwell there. And
Sharon shall be a fold of flocks, and the valley of Achor
a place for herds to lie down in, for my people that have
sought me." So God's elect, those called out ones in the
church, indwelt and led by the Holy Spirit (Romans 8), along
with God's chosen people, named here specifically as the seed
of Jacob and Judah, i.e. Israel, are to re-inherit the Promised
land together at the 2nd coming. Now, we'll be immortal, resurrected with immortal
bodies, but these Jews, God's chosen people here, named as
his servants, will yet be physical Jews, a remnant, a seed,
placed in the land to inherit it and repopulate it.
Although Pastor Mark hasn't taken the time to put verses
15-16 in context with the first 14 verses, his interpretation
according to context is right on the money. So two groups are really mentioned in verse
9 as inheriting the land, "mine elect shall inherit it, and my servants shall dwell
there."
We who are resurrected, made immortal, along with faithful
Abraham and all those resurrected in the church age, those
in whom the Holy Spirit really dwelt, will inherit the Promised
Land, along with a remnant seed from Jacob and Judah, used
by God to repopulate the land of Israel after the tribulation,
World War III. In the
land of Israel itself, by checking other prophecies, one third
of the Israeli's will survive WWIII and as Zechariah 12 shows,
come to repentance and acceptance of Yeshua of Nazareth as
their personal Messiah. It
is this "seed" spoken of in verse 9 here that God uses to
repopulate the Promised Land for the future coming reign of
Jesus Christ over the entire earth from Jerusalem, his capital
city now of the world (cf. Zechariah 14:9). All of Israel--the Jews in particular--what
Pastor J. Mark Martin calls that discarded dump-truck--will
become a rebuilt vehicle for bringing the gospel to the world
as a servant nation of the Lord.]
Look at Jeremiah 32, just go to the right, to the
next book, of Jeremiah 32.
Verse 37, "Behold I will gather them out of all the
lands to which I have driven them in my anger, and in my wrath
and in my great indignation, and I will bring them back to
this place and make them dwell in safety, and they shall be
my people and I will be their God."
Look at verse 40, "And I will make an everlasting covenant
with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them
good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they should
not depart from me. And
I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant
them in this land with my whole heart and with my whole soul.
For thus saith the Lord, Like as I have brought all
this great evil upon this people, so will I bring upon them
all the good that I have promised them" (verses 40-42).
Jeremiah 33, verse 19 to the end of the chapter.
[He starts in verse 19, but I wish again to put this
in proper context, giving the time order of this prophecy.
Verse 15a states "In those days, and at that time,
will I cause the Branch of righteousness to grow up unto David;"
That happened, the first part of verse 15 was fulfilled
by the birth of Jesus Christ, and his 33 years spent on earth.
Verse 15b next, describes Jesus Christ after his 2nd
coming: "and he shall execute judgment and righteousness in
the land." What land?
Lets read on through verse 16, "In those days shall
Judah be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely."
Is the Israeli nation and Jerusalem dwelling in safety,
real safety, right now? No. So
this is future, yet to be fulfilled.
That's the context these next verses have to be taken
in.] "And the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah
saying, 'Thus saith the Lord, If I break my covenant for the
day, and my covenant for the night, so that day and night
will not be at their appointed time, then my covenant may
also be broken with David my servant that he shall not have
a son to reign on his throne with the Levitical priests, my
ministers. As the host
of heaven cannot be counted, and the sand of the sea cannot
be measured, so I will multiply the descendants of David my
servant, and the Levites who minister to me.
Moreover the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah saying,
'Have you not observed what the people have spoken, saying,
'The two families which the Lord chose [could be referring
to the House of Israel (deported 721BC by Assyria) and the
House of Judah (deported 600s BC, temple destroyed by Babylonian
Empire; defeated and dispersed 70AD & 135AD, temple destroyed
by Roman Empire)] he's rejected them', thus they despise my
people. No longer are they a nation in their sight.'"
You see, they were saying the same thing at this time
[of Nebuchadnezzar's captivity]. 'God's through with Israel!' 'God's rejected them. God's despised them.' Look at what God's response is, verses 25-26,
"Thus says the Lord, 'If my covenant for day and night stand
not, and the fixed patterns of the heaven and earth I have
not established, then I would reject the descendants of David,
Jacob and David my servant." Hey, the sun came up this morning, right?
And it's going down tonight. God hasn't rejected Israel, not on your life.
Because if he rejected them, you'd have no hope of
thinking that God won't some day reject you. You see, they're his people by his choice, not
by their goodness. And
we are saved by his choice, and his grace, and not by our
performance.
To summarize it all let's go to Romans 11. Do a great big circle in the Bible and come
back to where we started.
Romans 11:1-5, "I say then, God has not rejected his
people, has he?" What's his response? "May it never be. For I too
am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of
Benjamin. God has not
rejected his people whom he foreknew.
Or do you not know what the Scripture says, in the
passage about Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel,
Elijah says, 'They've killed thy prophets, they've torn down
the altars, and I alone am left, and they're seeking my life.'
But what was the divine response to him?
God said, 'I have kept for myself seven thousand men
who have not bowed the knee to Baal.' In the same way then, there has also come to
be at the present time a remnant according to God's gracious
choice." Verse 6, read it out loud, "But if it is by
grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace
is no longer grace." God
has chosen Israel by grace.
Now individual Jews must be saved the same way as you
and I are saved. But
as a nation and as God's people, he's not through with them. He chose them, and it was by grace, not by their
works, and he hasn't rejected them, not on your life. Reading on, we pick it up in verse 25, "For
I don't want you brethren to be uninformed of this mystery,
lest you be wise in your own estimation; that a partial hardening
has happened to Israel"--and how long is that hardening going
to last?--read the end with me--"until the fulness of the
Gentiles be come in." That
is the end of the church age.
When the fulness of the Gentiles come in, we're out
of here! It's the Rapture!
Zoom! That's the way we talk about the Rapture at
my house. When you
talk about the Rapture to a three-year-old, what do I do?
I pick her up and say "Emily, we're going to go with
Jesus in the Rapture", and I throw
her up in the air and she goes way up, and says "The
Rapture's going to be great, Dad!" [Calvary Chapel congregations believe in the
Rapture and are basically Dispensational Pre-Millennialist
in their eschatology. The
other pre-millennialist group are the Classic or Historic
Pre-Millennialists, who don't stress a rapture or a 7 year
tribulation, but a 3.5 year tribulation, with some believing
God takes the faithful to a place of safety to sit out the tribulation,
out of harms way. This
website does not stress or emphasize either belief in the
protection of God's elect born-again Christians during the
tribulation, but stresses the one job and calling Jesus gave
the church as a whole, and that is to evangelize to the world
(cf. Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 1:6-9).
The purpose of this site is not to take sides, although
I'm a Classic Pre-Millennialist myself.
The purpose is to nourish Christians of all eschatological
persuasions, particularly those who dwell on the Pre-Millennial
side of the eschatological doctrinal fence.] There goes the
Rapture, at the end of the church age, the Lord's going to
call us up. No more Gentiles. I wonder who's going to be the last Gentile
is going who's going to be saved?
What if you are witnessing to the last Gentile and
you didn't know it? And he doesn't know it.and you can imagine all
heaven's waiting.But this hardening of Israel until the fulness
of the Gentiles come in, verse 26, read it out loud, "And
thus all Israel will be saved, just as it is written, the Redeemer with come
from Zion, he will remove ungodliness from Jacob, and this
is my covenant with them when I take away their sins."
Now verses 28-29 are absolutely essential. "From the standpoint of the gospel, they are
enemies for your sake. But
from the standpoint of God's choice, they are beloved for
the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable." Hallelujah! God looks at them, and they are a stubborn,
stiff-necked, feisty bunch of people with onion breath [laughter],
but he says, "I chose them."
"I promised they'd be a people before me forever."
Gang, you have before your eyes, living proof that
if God keeps his word, he keeps his word to them, stubborn,
stiff-necked, onion-breathed people, he'll keep his word to
you--stubborn, stiff-necked, onion-breathed people. You see, "The gifts and the calling of God are
irrevocable." When
he saved you by his gracious choice, not by anything you've
done, but by his doing, when he saved you, he can't return
you. Hallelujah."
[this is a transcript a sermon on Romans 3:1-20 given
by Pastor J. Mark Martin of Calvary Community Church, P.O.
Box 39607, Phoenix, AZ 85069.
Any additions to that sermon are in brackets [ ] .]
[Now when
you read that section from Cecil Roth's "History of the Jews"
I know a lot of that was very dry reading, but in spite of
the dry language of a historian, the immensity of Jewish suffering
comes through. The word massacre means just what it says, wholesale
indiscriminate killing of men, women and children. Count how many times he uses that word. Is it any wonder, as the Lord is currently restoring
the Jewish branch of Christianity, these Jewish-Christians
want nothing to do with Greco-Roman Christian worship practices
or styles of worship. Be
sure to check out my new section about the Messianic movement
of the Holy Spirit at http://www.UNITYINCHRIST.COM/messianicmovement/messianicmovement.htm
. And if anyone
reading this here believes that God is done with the Jews,
is of say, the amillennial persuasion, log onto: http://www.UNITYINCHRIST.COM/messianicmovement/twobranches.htm
and read
that article as well as the other articles in that section,
and see by God's very calling of massive numbers of ethnic
Jews within the past 30 years, that He is very far from being finished with them. The very beginnings of the spiritual restoration
of Israel, which is prophecied in the 12th and
13th chapters of Zechariah to occur at the 2nd
coming of Jesus Christ, has already begun in earnest. Don't believe me, log on that article and read
the evidence for yourself.
It's truly time for the Amillennial's to check out
what the Holy Spirit has been doing, and check their eschatological
beliefs against the backdrop of recent church history.]
[Now that
we're on the subject, having just looked at the history of
the Jews, and how they've suffered at the hands of Gentile
civil governments under whom they've been dispersed since
Roman times. We read
that horrible account of their treatment in Europe leading
up to the Spanish Inquisition (which was worse).
Then coming into modern times, we see powerful repeats
of history carried out against them in Hitler's Germany.
We see from prophecy that two thirds of the Israeli
Jews will die in the tribulation, or World War III.
We also have seen that God does not forsake them in
the end, but in essence rewards them, first by calling them
into a relationship with Yeshua, Jesus of Nazareth. I wish to leave this picture in your mind of
how God feels about these people.
I found the best explanation in a book titled "Loving God With All of Your Mind" by Elizabeth George. Let her explain on page 167 how God feels:
"The Fulfillment
of the Promise
Have you ever planned a vacation to mark
the end of a long project or a special evening out to celebrate
the completion of a difficult task?
Rewards like these are effective motivators.
We can endure hard times as long as we know there is
something good at the end. We can work hard and sacrifice meals, sleep,
and fun when the goal and the reward are worthwhile.
God knew that the seventy-year exile would
be difficult [and I might add here, the 2,000 year exile or
dispersion the Jews would find themselves in after 70-135AD,
along with everything they would go through, plug that one
in here just for kicks], so when he pronounced that sentence
He also promised the Israelites a reward-an expected end,
a future and a hope, and the restoration of peace and prosperity. As one commentator observed, God did not want
"that unexpenctant apathy which is the terrible accompaniment
of so much worldly sorrow.to be an ingredient in the lot of
the Jews." (H.D.M. Spence and Joseph S. Exell, eds., The Pulpit Commentary, Vol. 11, p. 587) The promise He held out-the promise that they
would have an end, "literally, and 'end and expectation' meaning
such an end as they wished for"-offered them security, hope,
and a reason to persevere."
Now the expected end God initially promised
them through Jeremiah was their restoration to the land of
Israel and Jerusalem under Cyrus, king of Persia.
But as we just saw God used Jeremiah, as well as many
of the prophets of the Old Testament to promise a glorious
restoration of Israel at the 2nd coming of their
Messiah, Yeshua of Nazareth.
The Old Testament if virtually filled with these restoration
prophecies. The more
astute and religious Jews know about these prophecies and
place their hope in them. God has not left the Jews without hope or promise
for the future. Read
Ezekiel 36, whole chapter.
Read Isaiah 35:1-10. Read Isaiah 2. Read Joel 3:1-21, the whole chapter, especially
if you believe the Lord has forever cast off the Jews. Joel 3 cross-references to Revelation 16 &
19, the return of Christ.
But read what is written in verses 20-21, when it's
all over, the battle of Armageddon is won by the Lord, "But
Judah shall dwell for ever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation. For I will cleanse their blood that I have not
cleansed: for the Lord dwelleth in Zion."
Doesn't that just say it all?]
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